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I think I have seen some articles that explain the issue well. Someone will probably jump in and help you out with a link. Sending the AM links to articles may have more power than trying to explain yourself.

Also feel free to have him/her call me so I can explain from the merchant side. If anyone can convince them to drop them, I probably can.

If you want something succinct and easy for the merchant to perk his ears up to, you may want to say something as simple as "they are diverting commissions from me, and they are taking alot of your free traffic, too - you may want to look into it."

If the merchant hears that his free traffic (ie, traffic not from affiliates or ppc or paid ads) is coming through ebates and now has to be paid for, they will likely do much of the research themselves. But to be a nice guy, you'd probably want to link to an article as well - preferably one from a very reputable source. I wish I had that for you, and I'll look for one, but thus far, I don't.

And definitely ask them if they want to talk to Linda, though depending on the merchant, they may not want to do any additional work, like dialing.

It's great that you want to educate the merchant instead of just dropping them.

The overall message should contain two main points:
1) That parasites (of which ebates is classified) diverts sales from work you have done in good faith for the merchant and you are not interested in providing advertising that someone else will reap the benefits of.
2) The merchant should also be made aware of implications the parasite has on it's profits as well.

===============================PeePee merchants with PooPoo policies allow our earnings to be flushed down the crapper.